About us: Embroidery & Printing Guide

Howsafe based in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire are experts in embroidery and printing onto a range of workwear and team garments. We have put together this embroidery and printing guide to help make your life that little bit easier. Virtually all of our range of workwear, uniforms and team clothing can be logo'd, all you need to do is give us a call on 01733 560669...

Embroidery and Printing Guide...

Putting together your first clothing order with your company/club logo can often be fraught with difficulties, especially without expert advice.

Howsafe, industry specialists in logo application have put together this Buyer’s Guide so that you, the customer can make informed decisions before you part with your hard-earned cash.

Obviously we hope you will give us the opportunity to quote for your requirements - If you would like a free quote with no obligation to buy please call Tel (01733) 560669 or drop us an email at sales@howsafe.co.uk

Why have your clothing logo'd?

Advertise your company/club whilst you work

Helps your crew feel part of a team

Makes your company/club stand out from the crowd

Identifies the employees of your company

Re-assures your customers that the are dealing with a professional company

The Machinery...
The quality of equipment used to create embroidered and printed logos can vary greatly. The use of poorly-maintained machines or equipment set at excessive speeds to achieve higher throughput can compromise quality of finish and produce poor results.

Howsafe uses on-site, state-of-the-art embroidery and printing machinery to provide a superb finish to all logos. All equipment is agent-serviced and configured to produce optimum quality, not to achieve higher turnover of orders. With multiple machines we are able to cope with fluctuating volumes.

Design Size...

As with all artwork, the smaller and simpler the designs is, the easier it is to produce at a lower cost. We find that In most cases, smaller discrete logos can often be more aesthetically pleasing than large designs. The trick of course is to strike a balance between impact and style that successfully projects the image that you are looking for. Polo shirts and sweat shirts look great with smaller pocket sized logos as where hi-viz garments possibly look better with large eye catching designs.

Maximum width sizing on an embroidered pocket sized logo is generally around 10cm (4" in old money) although we can often go a bit bigger. Generally Howsafe do not provide large embroidered logo's on the rear of garments - a few reasons: firstly they tend to have a high volume of stitching which can pull the material of the garment resulting in pukkering and can often make the garment sag - as well as this, as the designs take so long to run on an embrodiery machine we do not feel it is fair to the majority of our customers to hold up their orders (we quote approx 7-10 days on repeat orders and aim to keep it there)

For the heatprinting process howsafe can apply pocket sized logos and full sized rear logos up to 360cm (14") although hi-vis workwear the size is decided by the stripes on the garments. The average width size for a heatprinted logo is approx 260cm (10").

Embroidery...

Embroidery provides the ultimate permanent finish to your logo. Designs like the ones featured on the polo shirts and baseball cap can be produced for a small one off cost (often one off setup charges of £20 can be avoided with orders over a reasonable value). Embroidery adds texture and feel to your logo. Most logos can be recreated using embroidery, however some complicated designs, for instance where a logo features a large amount of graduated colours, may not be suitable for the embroidery process. In any case you will need to supply your logo – as always the higher the quality of the logo provided will allow a stitch digitiser to interpret your design giving a superior end result.

Our in-house design team here at Howsafe can work from quality artwork, but should you be unable to supply this for any reason we can usually work from good quality printed artwork such as letterheads or compliment slips.

The one-off cost of recreating your design will be quoted to you (as above - can often be provided FOC), allowing you to decide whether you wish to proceed. To give you some idea of cost, the average price for an embroidery disk (one-off charge) is approx £15.00 – £20.00 plus VAT (below 5000 stitches). The bigger the design, the more it costs.

If you do not have a company logo you can simply choose from one of our range of standard fonts, set-up for designs using standard fonts is totally free of charge. Once set-up has been completed embroidery is charged per application from as little as £1.50.

Stitch Types...

There are many types of stitch used with the embroidery process, but the two most common are Satin and Fill type stitches. The Satin Stitch is very basically a loop of thread and a Fill Stitch involves much more thread and is mainly used for filling in blocks of colour or for wide lettering. Both types are shown in the picture.

Howsafe will have your design made for optimimum quality of the finished product not for the quickest speed on our machines.

Heat-printed Single or Multi Colour...

Colour badges offer a quick and inexpensive method of attaching a multi-colour logo to your garment. With the new state of the art machines and modern inks, these badges are incredibly tough and long lasting, although not as hard wearing as embroidery or single colour printing. Howsafe would recomend full colour badges for promotional garments and outdoor clothing that is not repeatedly washed (such as hi-vis and coats etc).

Single colour printing hangs tough to most garments and is a simple way of applying a striking design - particularly popular for high visibility clothing.

Picture shows both single colour and full colour printed logo - as provided to Peterborough United Football Club.

A bit more detail about artwork you will need to provide...

If you need your company logo recreating as accurately as possible, you will ideally need some really good artwork, preferably a high-resolution image, which can be sent via email or disk/memory stick etc. Your printing or vehicle signwriting suppliers should be able to supply you upon request a suitable file if you don't have anything available. If you are unsure what to ask for, you should request a vector image EPS (Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw etc.) or 300dpi Raster file (Windows Bitmap, TIFF or JPEG) or PDF file.

If you do not have the above, don’t worry, we may be ok with some good quality printed artwork from a brochure or a letterhead - we have even been able to work from a picture of a side of a vehicle in the past.

Safety helmet printing...

Option 1. Howsafe can apply a sticker type logo onto the front of our range of safety helmets (ABS plastic helmets only as we find that stickers do not bond well to polyethylene helmets). There is no minimum order for this service.

Option 2. Scott Safety can offer highest quality ‘branding’ direct onto the helmet. Gives a razor sharp image with increased longevity. Multi positions on the helmet possible (see below). Minimum quantity of 40 helmets. One-off setup charge of £65.50 plus VAT applies if you wish to see a sample of the helmet with branding on or if you are happy to approve an electronically sent JPEG or PDF image of how your helmet will look then there is no setup charge. Printing is charged at £0.70 plus VAT per colour per position. Scott Safety will need high quality artwork preferably in bitmap/jpeg or in vector format.

Pricing...

Pricing in the logo-application industry is generally geared towards larger orders which can significantly reduce the per-garment logo cost.

Howsafe is happy to handle all sizes of orders and are happy to quote you a fixed price. While costs do come down as quantities increase, purchasers of smaller orders can expect fair pricing rather than being penalised heavily.

Please contact us today for a free no obligation quote by calling (01733) 560669 or email your requirements through to sales@howsafe.co.uk

How many garments do I need?

If you’re going to invest in the right kit you need to consider what the garments are going to be subjected to, how often they will be washed and how many days of the week they will be worn.

Howsafe stick to tried and tested good quality products from the top manufacturers; our company policy is not to go out and source the cheapest products we can find, but the best quality products that offer great value for money for the customer. If you’re looking for at least a good year of wear and the garments will be worn during a five day week it is advisable to go for 5 polo shirts, 2-3 sweat shirts and 2 pairs of trousers.

Deadlines...

Delivery times in the industry can vary greatly. We often hear of orders taking up to 12 weeks to complete. Even if a supplier can promise speedy turnaround of embroidery or printing you should take into account whether they are able to supply the garments in a timely manner.

Howsafe carries very high stock levels on its main lines, usually enabling us to complete your off-the-shelf order within 7-10 working days (often quicker). This excludes new orders where artwork approval might be required and orders for special order garments. If you need it quicker, let us know and we will see what we can do!

Once we know your exact requirements we will ask you to fill out an embroidery/printing form, this allows us to keep your requirements on file so that next time you order we have your design ready to go.

Notes for your consideration....

Although adding staff names looks great, what happens if the employees leaves before their garments have been issued or if the garments don’t fit ? - if it has not got a name on you can simply issue it to somebody else.

Consider trying garments before you buy to ensure sizing is correct - different manufacturers have different sizing i.e. a XXL in a Kustom Kit garment may be a different size to a XXL in a Fruit of the Loom garment. Howsafe have one of the best workwear shops in the country - just pop over to discuss your options and try sizing. For business within 25 miles of Peterborough an Account Manager is able to visit you to run through options.

The Workwear Store...

This is where it all happens - pop down to see us and we will hold your hand through the process of your first order.

All embroidery and printing onto our range of workwear is done on-site at Howsafe.

EMBROIDERY & PRINTING

Howsafe are a supplier of printed and embroidered workwear and corporate clothing. Based in Peterborough and serving Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolkshire, Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, we offer garment printing and embroidery on polo shirts, t-shirts, sweatshirts, fleeces, jackets, soft shells, caps and workwear. Working to extremely high standards, our embroidery and printing team is based at our Workwear Store in Peterborough and have been applying logos and badges for over two decades. Click here to read our embroidery and printing guide.